Traditionally, the reach of the organic content you post to your Facebook business page has been limited by the scope of Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm. In other words, when you posted an update to your page, that update would only reach a limited number of your fans' news feeds, because Facebook's algorithm ranks and shows content based on the likely interest of a given user. But today, Facebook is rolling out a new tool that enables page admins to extend the reach of their page's organic content.

Introducing 'Promoted Posts'

Facebook is calling this new tool Promoted Posts, a paid offering for Facebook page admins to promote recent posts, extending their reach beyond the normal exposure they'd get in fans' news feeds. In other words, using Promoted Posts will increase the percentage of fans your organic content reaches, although Facebook makes no indication of exactly how much more that percentage is:

"Your promoted posts will be seen by a larger percentage of the people who like your Page than would normally see it. It will also be seen by a larger percentage of the friends of people who interact with your post." - Facebook

You can promote any type of post you can create in your page's sharing tool, including status updates, photos, offers, videos, and questions. Using Promoted Posts, you'll generate sponsored stories that get delivered to both desktop and mobile news feeds, not the right-hand sidebar where ads are normally displayed. These Promoted Posts will get shown to users who are already fans of your page in addition to friends of people who interact with the promoted post (i.e. friends of people who have liked, shared, commented, or claimed an offer from the promoted post). These promoted stories, which are marked as "Sponsored" in news feeds, will run for up to 3 days after the post was originally created; so if you decide to promote a post 1 day after you originally published it, the promotion will only run for 2 days.

The tool is reportedly being rolled out to all Facebook pages (regardless of type), provided they have at least 400 fans.

Use Cases for Promoted Posts

Why use Promoted Posts? Quite simply, they can help marketers get more exposure for organic Facebook content they want to put more promotional muscle behind. According to Facebook, fans spend 2x more on average than non-fans. Considering this is a paid offering, marketers might reserve this extra promo push for content they really want to drive more engagement and interaction for. Here are some examples:

How to Use Promoted Posts

Interested in experimenting with Promoted Posts to extend the reach of your page's content? Follow these simple steps to promote either a new post you're creating now or one you've already published.

Step 1: Click 'Promote'

When creating a new post, click the 'Promote' button:

When promoting a post you've already published, you'll find the Promote button on the bottom of the post after any engagement it's already generated:

Step 2: Specify Targeting

If you're creating a brand new post, click the 'Public' drop-down arrow to select from the targeting options. You can make it public or choose to target by location (country, state, or city) and language.

Step 3: Set Your Budget

Decide on the lifetime (not daily) budget for your post. Remember, promotions can run for up to 3 days from when the post was first published. Facebook will indicate the estimated reach for the budget you select to help you decide how much to spend. Click 'Save,' and your promotion will immediately become live.

Pausing Promoted Posts

Admins also have the option of pausing particular promotions before the 3-day promotion period if they'd like to stop their promotion and ad spend. Just click on the 'Promoted for $X' drop-down arrow, select the gear icon, and choose 'Stop Promotion' to pause a Promoted Post.

Measure Promoted Post Success

As savvy inbound marketers know, the only way to know the success of the marketing experiments you run is to measure them!

Tracking Via Facebook Ad Manager

Luckily, Facebook will automatically generate a new campaign in your Ad Manager for every Promoted Post you create, which will consist of one promotion and one Sponsored Story. The stats you'll find here are the same as you would see for any other ad or Sponsored Story you'd run, such as click-through rate and impressions. To learn more about how to measure the success of your Facebook advertising efforts, check out this post.

Tracking Via Post Flyouts

Marketers can also get a quick look at a Promoted Post's Insights via flyouts accessible from the post itself, such as the number of people it's reached and the budget that was spent up until that point. This information can also be accessed via your page's Insights.

If you don't have access to Promoted Posts yet and you have at least 400 fans, sit tight. It seems like Facebook is rolling it out gradually. To learn more about Promoted Posts and watch Facebook's overview video, visit https://www.facebook.com/help/promote.